One of the most important things I’ve learned from Dan Kennedy (one of my favorite marketing “gurus”) is the concept of Good is Good Enough. However, I know firsthand that many people have the wrong idea what it really means.

I tweeted something about this one time. Oh my gosh, I got hammered!

Several people proceeded to lecture me about how harmful this way of thinking  was. They thought I was promoting mediocrity and that the strategy would lead me down a road of half-done, low quality projects which would never amount to much.

They obviously did not understand the nature of Internet marketing.

I can’t tell you how many beginners I come in contact with who waste countless hours getting their sites as “perfect” as possible as soon as possible. In fact, I just saw a forum post today from a beginner who mentioned she was burning the midnight oil getting her site “just right” before “submitting it to the search engines” (that last statement  about “submitting to the search engines” demonstrates her berginnerhood, but that’s a topic for another post).

Hey, I’m not knockin’ the newbies out there. I used to be the SAME way. I spent hours on end doing things that did not matter at the time. It wasn’t until I was introduced to Dan’s World that I understood the error of my thinking and how the need for perfection was holding me back.

First of all, exactly who is a beginner making their site perfect for? New sites HAVE NO TRAFFIC.

Note to beginners: Internet marketing is not a “Build It and They Will Come” process.

Beginning marketers need to resist the warm and fuzzy feelings they get from tweaking their new sites until they are oh-so-perfect. Hey, I’ve been there. I know what that feeling is like. You get lost in the fantasy of imagining countless thousands of visitors admiring what you have so thoughtfully created. It feels good.

An even sadder thing about this phenomena is that the lesson is not learned with the first “failed” site. In fact (if the beginners doesn’t quit after the first failure), the need for “making it perfect”, and thus getting more of that feel-good-feeling, is even stronger the second time around. Of course they have the same outcome.

Let’s contrast two scenarios…

John G. sets his sites on marketing “customized mini widgets”. His main thoughts are soley focused on making a killer website to promote his widgets. He’s looked at the competitions’ sites and KNOWS he can make a site far more attractive and thus sell more widgets than any other site.  He paid a designer top dollar for some great banner graphics. He bought the most expensive theme on the market simply because it was so “pretty”. He’s got his AdSense ads perfectly optimized for size, shape, color. He’s researched some affiliate programs and has meticulously inserted those affiliate links into his site. He has a day job, but works every night and every weekend on the site. My Oh My, the site is looking sharp. He decides it’s pretty enough to now show his friends and family. How proud John G. is of his bright and shiny site. He invested 6 weeks of his life in creating this beautiful site.

Of course you can guess what the problem is…John G. has a pretty site with no visitors.

John G.’s method is extremely common. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen that failing strategy in action.

On the other hand, Susy Q. understands what “good is good enough” means. She too will market “customized mini widgets”. She buys a domain name and gets basic hosting. She spends 2 minutes installing WordPress. She spends another 20 minutes doing basic configurations in WordPress and also installs and configures the SEO All In One plugin. Sure, it’s dog ugly, but she leaves the basic, default WP theme in place. She wastes no time or money with graphics for now. She doesn’t get side-tracked with signing up for and inserting affiliate ads or adsense.

Susy Q. understands what the priorities are. She knows that good is good enough…for now anyway. Her ONLY focus now is optimized content and backlinks. She has no need for the warm and fuzzy feelings of having a pretty site in the beginning. All she wants at this point is some Google love.

Susy Q. worked her rear off creating some quality and optimized content early on and then getting as many backlinks from as many places as she could.

Remember John G. ….after 6 weeks John had a pretty site he was really proud of!

After 6 weeks Susy Q. begin having positive results. She had some pages ranking well. She was getting some traffic for her selected keywords! She had the ball rolling!

Now that Susy KNOWS she’s got a winner (her keyword research was good and so was her SEO), she can invest a bit of time in sprucing up the site with a new theme and putting some ads on maybe. But she’s not in a huge hurry. She knows that “making money” is the easy part if she get the traffic flowing into the site. Getting traffic is the real kicker.  300 page views a week is cool, but those few won’t make that much money really. The majority of her time is still best spent with creating content and backlinks.

Ok, I understand people well enough to know it’s probably asking too much for a beginner to simply stick with the default and ugly WP theme in the beginning. I understand most people sort of need a moderately attractive site they can buy into; I’m willing to compromise on this. So go ahead and install a theme you can go long term with. Go to Fiverr.com and get a cheap but decent looking banner made for your site. But that’s about it! Good is good enough remember!

The sooner you get your rear in gear with creating content and getting backlinks, the sooner you’ll see some success.

Don’t be like John G. and have 6 weeks of under your belt with nothing but a pretty site to show for it